Uber hit by sexual harassment claims

SAN FRANCISCO — Uber was rocked by scandal once again this week after a former employee raised claims of sexual harassment. But experts say this time, the CEO’s conciliatory response — both in public and during an internal meeting Tuesday — may signal Uber is growing up as it inches closer to an IPO.

Tuesday morning Uber CEO Travis Kalanick gathered his employees in an all-hands meeting to discuss the explosive allegations, said an Uber employee who attended the meeting and declined to be named. Kalanick admitted to making mistakes, the employee said. Uber had failed to prioritize diversity and inclusion, Kalanick told his team and didn’t adequately ramp up its human resources department to keep up with the company’s explosive growth.

For some experts in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, those admissions were a sharp contrast to the confrontational, win-at-all-costs attitude often associated with Uber. And while the allegations lodged against the company show Silicon Valley continues to struggle to include and value women, some say Kalanick’s response suggests Uber is maturing.

“They’ve been very proactive here, aggressive, and just trying to mitigate and handle a problem without making excuses or being combative,” said Ben Narasin, a partner with Portola Valley, Calif.-based Canvas Ventures. “That can either be a sign of company maturity, individual maturity, or perhaps, a proximity to a public path.”

Uber quickly sprang into damagecontrol mode after former Uber engineer Susan Fowler Rigetti on Sunday published a blog post claiming the company’s human resources team protected a male manager who propositioned her for sex and engaged in inappropriate behavior with other women. Instead of punishing the manager, Rigetti says, Uber forced her to transfer to another team and later gave her a negative performance review.